


Hello, Prague

by roswyrm



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: (i do) (i'm sad), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Do You Ever Wanna Talk About Your Emotions Zolf, Gen, Theorising for Fun And Profit, What-If, and tears, mostly tears, nope - Freeform, obviously, spoilers for the prague arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: “Hello, Prague,” something hisses in his mind, and it freezes Zolf in place, cold fear washing over him.Or, Zolf loses family, loses faith, over and over again.





	Hello, Prague

**Author's Note:**

> listen i just want sad mad sea dad to be okay, so i wrote this because if i theorise, i'll b wrong. so, if i make a Sad Theory, then maybe something good will happen.
> 
> or, y'know, it'll just mean more tragedy. whatever. it's fine. everything's fine.

_“Hello, Prague.”_

Zolf goes to the university because he heard; he heard the voice, he heard the howling from the theatre’s roof.

(Zolf goes to the university because he knows that if something terrible happened, Hamid and Sasha were there to stop it.  
Zolf drags himself out of the room he's been slumped in for the past three days because he wants to make sure his ~~friends~~ old employees are safe.   
He wants to know if they'll take him back.  
He's useless and dangerous but at least when he's with them, he has a _purpose—)_

“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t get up—”  
“No, don’t you ‘sorry sir’ me! My team- my _friends_ are up there!”

(Zolf twists his ring around his finger because he’s guilty; because they _aren’t_ his friends, he gave that up when he left, they probably haven’t even thought of him.  
Zolf twists his ring around his finger because he’s terrified ~~for his friends~~ because of the biting _fear_ he felt when that voice echoed through his head.  
Zolf twists his ring around his finger because _what if they were right there when that voice spoke, what if they had it even worse, what if they weren’t okay?)_

Zolf’s ring gets noticed.

“You’re a Harlequin.”  
“So I’ve heard. Where the hell are the Rangers?”

They ask him who he is.  
They ask him who he works for.  
They ask him what he knows about Kafka.

He tells them to go to hell.

“The Rangers, godsdamnit! Led by a halfling, about three foot two? One of the more prominent members is a massive, gleaming idiot marching along being horrid? Ring any bells?”  
“Well, the idiot’s dead, and the rest of them are gone.”

No one knows where they are.  
They take away his ring, convinced it’s some secret message relating system.  
(Zolf hasn’t bitten his nails in years.  
He picks the habit up again.)

“Just— do you have any ideas about where they went? At all?”  
“No. What do you know about the whereabouts of Marie Curie?”  
“Nothing! I only learned about the Harlequins a week ago!”

(Hamid’s missing, Sasha's missing, Bertie's dead.  
Bertie’s _dead.)_

“Ah, Zolf—”  
“Sod off, Wilde.”

Wilde doesn’t know anything.  
Bertie’s dead.  
His ~~frien~~ former employees are missing.  
 _Zolf’s replacement_ is missing with them.

(It has no right to sting as much as it does.)

“I rather like him, actually. He’s funny. And he hasn’t threatened to drown me.”  
“Artemisian, yeah? He’ll probably threaten to shoot you before long.”  
“Mm, I don’t think so. Not that I don't trust your ex-employees, but they’ve probably already died, wherever they are.”

Wilde leaves the room with a black eye.  
He never comes back in.  
Zolf doesn’t ask after him.

He doesn’t even like Wilde.

“Are you lonely, without your friend?”  
“Wilde’s not my friend.”  
“Are you lonely, without a single familiar face?”

~~Zolf is so lonely it _hurts_ , so abandoned and isolated that there’s an _ache_ in his chest.~~

Zolf doesn’t answer her question.

They carve something into the doorway.  
He recognises it from the null room in Paris.  
He wakes up, and his bed is soaked by the water that made up his legs.

“Morning, Mr Smith.”  
 _“You son of a bitch!”_

He does the only thing he’s any good at.  
Zolf sulks, alone in his room.  
Zolf wallows in self-pity and self-hatred, unable to get up and do anything.

He doesn’t bother trying to keep himself together.

(Who’s going to judge him?  
The paladins who're convinced he’s an anti-meritocrat?  
The university staff who’ve been locked out just as he’s locked in?  
His cut-off god who he’s lost faith in?)

“It’s been decided that you can’t provide any useful information. You can go.”  
“Not without a wheelchair, I can't. And if it comes in the same ugly red as everything else, I'm not getting in.”

Zolf reads the newspaper.  
(What’s happened? What day is it? How long has he been locked up in that classroom?)  
There's been a death in the al-Tahan family.  
 _Hamid, the prodigal son, returns home to Cairo!_  
 _More on Page 7_

Zolf goes to Cairo.

(Who else is he going to turn to?  
His ex-contact who he threatened to kill?  
His ex-god who hasn’t bothered getting back in touch?)

The guards at Hamid’s house don’t speak English.  
Zolf doesn’t stop trying, though, and one of them goes and fetches a woman in a headscarf that he recognises from the paper.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?”  
“Zolf Smith. I was a friend— your son and I worked together.”

Hamid’s not _here,_ either.  
They let him in, though, let him stay the night.  
He mostly talks to Saira and Hawaa; Hamid’s little brothers don’t speak English.

“Zolf? Oh, I think he wrote you a letter. It’s still here somewhere, I can get it after dinner.”

There are smudges on the parchment that might be ink but look more like eyeliner.  
 _To my good friend Zolf Smith,_

(There are smudges on the parchment from where Zolf tried to rub out words.  
 _Hamid,)_

There’s a small spot at the bottom of the page that looks like a teardrop.  
 _I remain, as always, your friend and servant._  
 _Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan_

(Half of the letter is unreadable from pen marks or from where it was thrown into a sink.  
 _Don’t be a stranger. I still like you and Sasha._  
 _Zolf)_

“Are you alright?”  
“Fine.”  
“Are you cryi—”  
“I said I’m _fine.”_

Zolf checks his account.  
There’s money in it, just like Hamid said there would be.

_(“I don’t want it.”_   
_“I don’t care.”_   
_“Payment enough was meeting you!”)_

“Did they mention anything about where they were going next?”  
“I don’t know, they said something about Damascus.”  
“Damascus. Alright.”  
“Are you just going to follow them?”

~~To the ends of the earth.~~

“It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> u can find me on tumblr @roswell-the-wrongdoer where i Speak Loudly About How Much I Love This Salty Cleric


End file.
